The number of pilgrims walking on the Camino de Santiago, a medieval pilgrimage that crosses northern Spain, has steadily increased over the last 30 years. In the summer of 2012 as many as a thousand pilgrims from around the world arrived daily to Santiago de Compostela, the route’s final destination. At the same time, an increasing number of artistic representations of this pilgrimage have emerged: Fictional and non-fictional stories, paintings, photographs, and movies can now be readily consumed. The increasingly popularity of the Camino has also attracted a growing amount of scholarly attention and has moved pilgrimage studies to the center of lively intellectual debates. Although much has been done that examines the pilgrimage’s historical past, little scholarly work has been published studying contemporary representations of the Camino or examining the ways in which the 2lst-century examines, imagines, or experiences this pilgrimage.
The editors of a proposed volume to fill this gap invite the submissions of abstracts that approach the Camino from an interdisciplinary and varied range of perspectives to address the complex ways in which the Camino signifies today, both by itself and in connection to other sites of pilgrimage and discovery. This volume aims to explore the contemporary meaning of the Camino as viewed from a wide range of disciplines and critical perspectives: literature, history, media studies, digital humanities, architecture, sociology, anthropology, cultural geography, travel, and pilgrimage studies. The editors’ goal is to produce an academic and theoretical framework that can be useful to contemplate the Camino in its current state. They welcome proposals for essays that address contemporary views on the Camino, including, but not limited to:
— The role of the diary and narrative on the trail
— Diversity on the trail
— Pilgrimage as recovery (addiction, injury, illness, judicial)
— Sites of discovery
— Pilgrimage as reenactment
— Topography and narrative
— Shifts in cultural meanings of the trail or towns
— Historical consciousness of the trail
— Material culture of the Camino
— Representations of the Camino in film and contemporary literature
— The Camino online and in the cloud
Abstracts of approximately 500 words, a chapter title, a short vita, and contact information should be submitted directly to the editors Annie Hesp at ahesp{AT}vt.edu (Virginia Tech) and Samuel Sánchez y Sánchez, at sasanchezsanchez{AT}davidson.edu (Davidson College). The deadline for chapter proposals is March 1st 2013. Completed chapter submissions will be August 1, 2013. Any questions may be directed to either editor.